DIY ‘Subkick’.
June 6, 2009
WOW I do not update this very regularly, but I plan to start. Today I’ve been working on a rather simple endeavor, but there is not a lot of information on the web about it so it took some time to figure out. As the pictures below show (sorry for the cell phone quality), I bought a Yamaha NS10 woofer, and proceeded to reverse wire it into a very large microphone. This involved some very basic soldering skills, and a little bit of reading prior to beginning. The gist of this whole idea is that many (most) dynamic microphones lack the sheer size in diaphragm to accurately translate the lowest of low end tones. The 6.5″ woofer that is usually installed in a Yamaha NS10 monitor is big enough to be a perfect candidate for the job, but not too big so as to be a big pile of mush and ill concentrated low end. Balance is key here.
One need simply cut off the female end of a microphone cable, (strip the wire) and solder pin 3 to negative and pin 2 to positive on the speaker terminal. The ground is only connected at the XLR side. Simple as that.
Now, many will know that Yamaha makes a commercial version of just such a thing. The Yamaha “Subkick” retails for around $370. The best part about this project is that it cost me $55 for the woofer, and about 10 minutes of my time to solder together.
Here is a sample of the kick drum (Premier maple), first with the microphone (Sennheiser e902 placed slightly inside), then with the woofer, and finally with both. Please don’t try to evaluate this with your laptop speakers or iPod headphones. You will need something with a subwoofer or basically anything that can produce some bit of low end. From there, the difference should be obvious.
Signal chain (very simple): mics>828mkIII>CPU. In Logic: extremely light subtractive EQ and compression, and phase inversion on the woofer.
Was it worth it? I think so..
Wade
